Orthopedic devices known as standers allow a person, often a child but also adults as well, with ambulatory problems, to stand in a vertical or quasi-vertical position. The person thus has his/her hands free for practicing activities such as drawing, writing, playing, working, interacting with other people, etc. The inability to stand up and stay in a vertical position for interacting with the environment or other persons often result in psychological problems considerably affecting the person's standard of living. Besides the psychological effects on the person, physical problems also arise due to the absence of mobility. Bones and muscles developments, for example, are affected by the lack of weight-bearing effects.
Standers are therefore often used today to make up for these problems. Furthermore, some standers are mobile so the user can be moved or transported where he/she wants to be. The standers tend to considerably decrease psychological and physical effects from which the person with ambulatory problems generally suffers.
One important problem with the current standers is that they either cannot be easily disassembled by a person alone, e.g. for transportation in a vehicle, or cannot be disassembled at all. Furthermore, their design is often complex and they are considerably heavy. Consequently, it can be a difficult task for a person alone to remove the body support unit from the base, and to eventually mount it back in place before use. Moreover, when disassembled, many adjustments made to the various parts of the stander to accommodate the user are lost. When reassembling the stander, all those adjustments must be done again.
Known in the art is U.S. Pat. No. 4,029,089 showing a pediatric stander formed of a post assembly having three legs attached to a supporting base with wheels. Once the post assembly is removed from the supporting base, many of the possible adjustments of the stander are lost. The mounting of the three legs of the post assembly with the supporting base is very difficult for a person alone. Indeed, the legs must all be properly aligned with the mounting brackets on the base, not to mention the relatively heavy weight of the disassembled upper part. Also, the stander has no supine position capabilities.
Also known in the art are U.S. Pat. No. 2,295,006 (Philips), U.S. Pat. No. 4,307,715 (Fante), U.S. Pat. No. 4,111,445 (Haibeck), U.S. Pat. No. 4,620,714 (Davis), U.S. Pat. No. 4,968,0 (Kendrick et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 5,108,202 (Smith), U.S. Pat. No. 5,484,151 (Tholles), U.S. Pat. No. 5,265,689 (Kauffmann), U.S. Pat. No. 5,340,139 (Davis), U.S. Pat. No. 5,489,258 (Wohnsen et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 5,520,402 (Nestor et al.) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,618,055 (Mulholland) and U.S. Design Pat. No. 347,604 (Ernst et al.), U.S. Design Pat. No. 356,527 (Wohnsen et al.) and U.S. Design Pat. No. 368,243 (Nestor et al.) which provide examples of orthopedic devices for supporting a user in a stand-up position. Some of the devices described in those US patents and US Design patents can be folded, but cannot be disassembled easily.
Generally, different sizes of standers are necessary because their adaptation range to the user growth and weight is limited.
Also, the child or the adult generally stands in an unnatural elevated position over the ground level due to the stander design. This situation might result in the user feeling that he/she is different and apart from the people he/she interacts with.